More works by Bahk Seonghi

Mixed Medium

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Bahk Seonghi creates art that studies the elaborate relationship between human culture and nature. In this particular installation, Bahk uses his identifiable charcoal piecing technique to create the visual of three potted plants dangling near a wall. Raw tree branches were introduced in this piece, to complement with the natural concept the artist adhere to. For Bahk, charcoal is both a symbolic representation of a tree reborn, and a paradoxical exposition of its death. The dead tree branches portray the ‘life’ growing out of the potted planted, formed by a cluster of charcoal. The composition evokes our thought on the transient quality of life and rebirth, as the shrub seems to grow on the remnants of the dead, metamorphosed body of dead trees. Bahk achieves this philosophical synopsis from an intricate yet uncomplicated orchestra of essential natural materials.

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+Artist Bio

Bahk Seong Ghi, born in 1966 in Seoul, Korea, is known for his large scale sculptures in charcoal, stainless steel and wood. He received his masters degree in Chung-Ang University, majoring in Sculpture at the Fine Arts Department in Seoul before continuing his training as a sculptor at the Accademia di Belle Arti Brera, in Milan, Italy. Bahk has been represented in over 20 solo exhibitions all over the globe
and more than 150 group exhibitions worldwide, collected by several organizations worldwide and has received multiple awards over the course of his career.
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+Critique

Endless Enumeration in the Space: Fiction of Fabricated Image and Nature's End

Art has become more difficult to do and interpret over the years. My recent work highlights the relationship between culture and nature. Culture is the civilized world where human beings seek convenience, whereas nature is the state naturalized by a dispensation of the universe that is far from man's strength. It is the relationship between man and nature that naturally derives from the relation of culture and nature. The relationship between man and nature has been strongly expressed in my work. Human architecture is chosen to represent culture, and to represent nature, charcoal, the last appearance of trees that stand with us in the world, is chosen. Why? It is a self-evident truth that I can think of a great number of meaning and forms, because architectural structures are meant to be useful while charcoal is one of last appearances of nature.

I think it is wrong if western materialized culture dictates what man thinks. I think that man is no more a different object than a tree that exists in nature, so that it is inevitable that man should co-exist with nature without tilting his balance either way in the relationship of man and nature. How do you see nature - concealed behind a history of splendid civilization built by modern man. My work is thus based on this premise. Strongly presented are the structures of nylon strings that are very subtle, light and nearly transparent. In the space, the nylon gives off lumps of charcoal that represent energy in nature and symbolize its vanishing into the air. This structure expresses the fiction of fabricated images as a concept against modern utility.

To me, charcoal reveals a field of nature, concealing the fact that charcoal is what remains of a tree after it has been burned down. Eventually, charcoal is the material out of which my works derive their effect. In the end, charcoal becomes a brick that forms a building. As time passes, that which is manifested in my work becomes transformed into a simple and light material. Hanging sculptures are a poetic expression of the melding of nature and architecture, and the irresistible lightness of an art piece.